Nick Dunhill's workshop NGG16 Garratt

Well folks the Whitby tanks are on hold while Slater's make suitable wheels, so I have moved on to my next commission for the time being. It's a Backwoods Kit for one of these:

I've made the coupling rods and detailed them with oil caps and knuckle joints;

Then I moved on to cutting the frames and modifying them to accept hornblocks from the Alan Gibson range (a bit 4 mm-ish here, apologies!)

I sold the inappropriate Romford spoked drivers and Colin at Alan Gibson sold me some disc wheels that are the correct diameter and nearly the correct pattern. They look a lot better. I milled off the crankpin bosses and added balance weights to hide the mess.

....I have started making prototypical frame stretchers, firstly the inner ones. I measured everything up from the drawings and decided to go ahead. The modification will also involve alterations to the inner bogie and the frames supplied in the kit. I think the kit is a generic thing that allows wiggle room for the many variations, and the WHR No. 87 has quite a few differences! Anyway this is the upper part of the stretcher made from 0.4 mm scrap brass. I'll make the bottom portion tomorrow, I think the pics are pretty self-explanatory.

The thing in the foreground of the last picture is the stretcher supplied in the kit. More tomorrow......

...so as you can see I have made some frame stretchers for the Garratt. I had a problem trying to decide where they should fit on the chassis supplied in the kit. When I cross referenced the drawings with the chassis etch it turns out its a whopping 8.7 mm too short! So I have cut out and fit some suitable extensions.

I cut out one extension part and soldered it to a piece of scrap NS and cut round it etc etc.

I hope this isn't a reflection of the rest of the parts in the kit.......

I wonder how much the artwork owes to the OO9 original? That being the case, the material there may have been omitted for clearance on more typical OO9 track/curves (and in any event would be lost behind the cradle, if I've read it right?

You did tell me indeed. It's not a bad kit, just not a very detailed kit, we should have done some of our famous etchings for it. It just needs some elbow grease. To be fair the 'sleeve notes' say it's a generic kit to take in all the major detail variations.

It's odd to be doing a peedie-wee OO style chassis again. Once the chassis are done I'm on more familiar ground again. Colin from Alan Gibson has been a great help.

I don't know that it is - I was just wondering out loud (or whatever the keyboard equivalent is), though that would make some sense for Pete's point of view and the photos I've seen of completed 7mm versions hint that it might be; I'm much more familiar with the 4mm versions. I have a 4mm 'Russell' in the round-to-it boxes...